Japanese Government Confirms Meltdown March 12, 2011 | 2148 GMT Related Special Topic PageThe Japanese Disaster: Full Coverage Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported. This statement seemed somewhat at odds with Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano’s comments earlier March 12, in which he said “the walls of the building containing the reactor were destroyed, meaning that the metal container encasing the reactor did not explode.”

NISA’s statement is significant because it is the government agency that reports to the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy within the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. NISA works in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission. Its role is to provide oversight to the industry and is responsible for signing off construction of new plants, among other things. It has been criticized for approving nuclear plants on geological fault lines and for an alleged conflict of interest in regulating the nuclear sector. It was NISA that issued the order for the opening of the valve to release pressure — and thus allegedly some radiation — from the Fukushima power plant.

NISA has also overseen the entire government response to the nuclear reactor problems following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. It is difficult to determine at this point whether the NISA statement is accurate, as the Nikkei report has not been corroborated by others. It is also not clear from the context whether NISA is stating the conclusions of an official assessment or simply making a statement. However, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, also said that although it had relieved pressure, nevertheless some nuclear fuel had melted and further action was necessary to contain the pressure.

If this report is accurate, it would not be the first time statements by NISA and Edano have diverged. When Edano earlier claimed that radiation levels had fallen at the site after the depressurization efforts, NISA claimed they had risen due to the release of radioactive vapors.

Hearts and prayers out to the victims and families struggling in Japan. My own way of coping is to hide from disaster news coverage as it breaks. My nuclear post elsewhere is in the context of not knowing which way that conflicting story will break. I couldn't help though at peaking at this raw news footage in Japan of a helicopter rescue airlift and just the immense water force aftermath of the tsunami. I am deathly afraid of earthquakes, but this is something else horrific that follows...

Conjecture here but thank God for one thing that this is a first world country in an earthquake zone I am guessing built to handle something devastating like this better than a lot of other places might be.

To a certain degree, I have to unplug from the Japan footage, as I hate feeling so utterly helpless. I'm also frustrated by the nuclear incidents being reported, given the political agenda of the MSM, as well as the lack of detailed knowledge on both their and my behalf in analysing the severity of the problems.

As Japan scrambles to cope with a nuclear reactor damaged in the quake, Josh Dzieza talks to Ron Ballinger, a nuclear expert at MIT about how the plants work, worst-case scenarios, and more. Plus, full coverage of Japan's catastrophe.

Shortly after Japan was hit with the double disaster of a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, a possible third reared its head: nuclear meltdown. The quake caused 11 of Japan's nuclear reactors to shut down automatically, including three at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, 170 miles northeast of Tokyo. But the quake also cut Fukushima off from the power grid, forcing plant operators to switch to emergency diesel generators in order to continue cooling the reactor core, generators that then failed shortly after the tsunami hit. By the end of the day Friday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan had declared a “nuclear emergency,” and 200,000 people near the plant had been told to evacuate.

Then, Saturday afternoon, a building at the plant erupted in a massive explosion, apparently the result of hydrogen from the superheated fuel rods interacting with oxygen as plant operators tried to vent increasing pressure inside the reactor. Officials say the reactor wasn't damaged in the blast, and that radiation levels have actually been declining since. Nevertheless, they took the extreme step of flooding the reactor with seawater in an attempt to cool it down, and news that the cooling system for a second reactor at the same plant has begun to fail did little to calm worries of a meltdown. As Japan copes with its worst nuclear mishap at least since the leak at Tokaimura, The Daily Beast spoke with MIT Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering Ron Ballinger about worst-case scenarios, iodine tablets, and why he thinks everything is going to be fine. Plus, complete coverage of the quake.

What's the worst-case scenario?

Well, first off, we can't have a Chernobyl-like situation. The system is designed so that as long as we keep water in there to keep it cool, nothing will happen. There are three levels of protection here. One is the fuel cladding, and if that's damaged then it releases radioactive material into the pressure system, which is a steel container. Then there's a containment vessel around that. What likely happened is that you had fuel damage, damage to the first barrier, which produced hydrogen in the primary system, and then to keep the pressure down they vented the hydrogen into the building that was destroyed.

Article - Dzieza Japan Nuke Police officers wearing respirators guide people to evacuate away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following an order for residents who live in within a 10 km (6.3 miles) radius from the plant after an explosion in Tomioka Town in Fukushima Prefec

What happens if all the water boils off?

Hypothetically, if the water all boils and evaporates, then the fuel will stay molten and eventually melt through the steel vessel. But that's already beyond a hypothetical worst-case scenario for me. The steel vessel is four inches thick, and they could always put seawater around the vessel, and that would keep it cool, so it can't melt. If you put a frying pan in water, you could put a blowtorch on the other side and it won't make any difference. Then you have the other containment vessel, with a concrete faceplate underneath that's between four and 10 feet thick. But melting through that is hypothetical beyond normal reasoning.

Radiation spiked at 1,015 microsievert per hour before the explosion. Is that dangerous?

No, that's about 100 milirem. It's high, but you get about 35 milirems on a trans-Atlantic flight. And if you live in Denver, you get about 50 milirems per year.

What is the dangerous level, and what happens when that level is reached?

The LD50—that is to say, the point when 50 percent of the people exposed will meet Jesus—is in the order of 250 rem, or maybe 400. A big number. Keep in mind, what they've been exposed to is 0.1 rem, and about 50 percent fatality is on the order of 400 rem. What would happen with that kind of exposure is that they would get sick. Radiation damage destroys the immune system. Most people who die of radiation sickness die of pneumonia or a cold, they die of some disease which they have but their immune system can't fight off.

Why is Japan distributing iodine tablets?

One of the isotopes of fission products, when fuel melts, is an iodine isotope, and it goes in your body through your thyroid. So if you take iodine tablets, the non-radioactive iodine goes to your thyroid, you bulk up your thyroid with iodine and it prevents absorption of the radioactive iodine.

What failsafes are there to prevent a meltdown?

A lot. First there's the SCRAM system, it automatically ejects the control rods into the core and shuts the plant down. That happened right after the earthquake. Then there's a number of core spray systems, which inject water to keep things cool. Then, if the system needs to depressurize, there's something called a suppression pool that it vents steam into. Then, when the system is depressurized there are other systems that inject water at low pressure. And then, worst comes to worst, there are pumps that can take water from the local cooling water supply, in this case the ocean, and just pump water in there. As long as there's water in there, it might be expensive for the utility to get it cleaned up, but everything is going to be fine.

Miracle of the baby girl plucked from the rubble: Four-month-old reunited with her father after incredible rescue

By Richard ShearsLast updated at 10:27 AM on 15th March 2011

The sound of a baby’s cry amid the rubble seemed so impossible that soldiers searching a tsunami-smashed village dismissed it as a mistake.

But it came again. And they realised they had not been hearing things.

They pulled away wood and slate, dug back thick oozing mud – and there was the child they were to describe as a ‘tiny miracle’. ... And fear: Upon hearing another tsunami warning, a father tries to flee to safety with the baby girl he has just been reunited with

... And fear: Upon hearing another tsunami warning, a father tries to flee to safety with the baby girl he has just been reunited with

The four-month-old girl had been swept from her parents’ arms in the shattered village of Ishinomaki when the deadly wave crashed into the family home.

For three days, the child’s frantic family had believed she was lost to them for ever.

But yesterday, for a brief moment, the horrors of the disaster were brightened by one helpless baby’s story of survival.

Soldiers from the Japanese Defence Force had been going from door to door pulling bodies from the devastated homes in Ishinomaki, a coastal town northeast of Sendai.

Most of the victims were elderly, unable to escape the destructive black tide.

But for this precious moment, at least, it was only the child who mattered to the team of civil defence troops who found her.

Ex-Sandia engineer talks about some of the worst things that could happen in Japan

Dr. Michael Allen, vice provost for research and dean of graduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University, spent much of his early career at Sandia National Labs studying nuclear reactor accidents of the worst kind and performing simulations to better understand how bad things happen -- including core meltdowns.

Extremely small amounts of the radioactive isotopes iodine-131 and zenon-133 reached a monitoring station by the city's Atomic Testing Museum this week, said Ted Hartwell, manager of the Desert Research Institute's Community Environmental Monitoring Program.

Hartwell said he's certain the isotopes came from Japan because they're not usually detected in Nevada. But he said the readings were far below levels that could pose any health risks.

"Unless you have an accident like this (in Japan) you wouldn't expect to see this. No doubt it's from Japan," Hartwell told The Associated Press.

Minuscule amounts of radiation from Japan have been reported elsewhere in the West, including California, Colorado, Hawaii and Washington. Officials have said those levels also were not harmful.

Nevada health officials have said they do not expect any risk to the state from Japanese radiation releases because of the distance the materials would have to travel.

"Any material released must travel 10,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, during which time it will be dispersed and diluted in the atmosphere to levels that might eventually be detectable, but which will not present a health hazard nor require any protective actions," said Eric Matus, radiation physicist for the Nevada State Health Division.

Scientists say they weren't surprised that radioactive isotopes from Japan were detected in the Western states.

TOKYO—The Japanese government initially underestimated radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in part because of untimely rain, and so exposed people unnecessarily, a report released this week by a government research institute says.

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An aerial view of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station as seen on March 24, 2011..Adding to earlier evidence of initial government missteps, the report by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency says an unlucky combination of heavy rains and shifting winds meant that much of the airborne radioactive debris washed down over a broad area around the crippled plant. Before the changing weather, the radiation had been expected to drift over the Pacific Ocean, which would have posed less of a risk to public health, at least in the short term.

"Local residents would have stayed indoors and avoided radiation if they had been told about the dangers of the rainfall," said Tetsuo Sawada, assistant professor of reactor engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The Japanese government's initial evacuation zone—after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling systems and caused core meltdowns—was within 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) of the stricken plant. But as the study highlights, radiation spread far beyond the 20-kilometer radius, with rainstorms contributing to the ground contamination.

According to the agency, the rain came on the worst possible day for plant operators—March 15, the day an explosion struck the plant's No. 2 reactor, punching a large hole in the suppression chamber that is part of the primary containment vessel, the main shield for radiation releases. The gash allowed toxic air to leak into the atmosphere without check.

According to the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, radiation releases peaked around that day, dropping as workers managed to cool down the badly damaged No. 2 unit, as well as the other three seriously damaged reactors.

"If there was no rain on March 15, the ground contamination would have been far less severe than it is," said Haruyasu Nagai, an author of the report.

Two earlier explosions, just after the disaster, at reactors Nos. 1 and 3, didn't release nearly as much radiation because they occurred outside the primary containment vessels. The explosion at No. 2, by contrast, was caused by a buildup of pressure inside the containment vessel, as the overheating reactor kept producing steam.

The rain started falling in areas around the plant in the afternoon of March 15. At the same time, the wind, which had been heading east—as is normal for the season—shifted and started heading northwest, carrying the toxic air deep into the country.

By the time the rain stopped, a large swath of land to the northwest of the plant, well beyond the 20-kilometer radius, was contaminated far more than allowed for human habitation. In late April, the government belatedly decided to evacuate residents in these areas.

"Much of the radioactive substance would have been carried into the ocean on an easterly wind eventually," says the report's author, who estimates about half of the radiation released in March ended up falling into the ocean.

Asked about the latest report, a spokesman for the nuclear-safety agency said the results appeared to be valid. "The radiation is likely to have spread as the JAEA analysis suggests," Yoshinori Moriyama said.

Scientists recreate how multiple waves from undersea quake merged into single front that devastated north-eastern Japan

The tsunami that devastated the north-east coast of Japan on 11 March was created by at least two wave fronts that merged to form a far more destructive "double tsunami", scientists in the US have said.

Waves created when a magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck off the coast came together to create a "merging tsunami" captured by satellites for the first time, according to Nasa and researchers at Ohio State University. Peaks and troughs on the ocean floor helped channel the waves into one huge wave, amplifying its destructive force, they said.

The tsunami swept across a long stretch of coastline, swallowing up entire towns and villages, and leaving almost 20,000 people dead or missing.

Nasa said two of its satellites and a European satellite happened to be passing over the tsunami on the day of the disaster. They were equipped with instruments capable of measuring changes in sea levels to an accuracy of a few centimetres.

"Nobody had definitively observed a merging tsunami until now," said Y Tony Song, a research scientist at Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in California. "It was a one in 10 million chance that we were able to observe this double wave with satellites."

Song said the same phenomenon could have caused the Chilean tsunami in 1960, in which 200 people in Japan and Hawaii were killed. He described previous attempts to acquire images of similar waves as they travelled towards land as "like looking for a ghost".

The satellite images show how two wave fronts merged to form a single, bigger wave far out at sea. It was then pushed in a certain direction by underwater ridges and mountain chains, sustaining its force as it roared towards the shore.

Interesting story today that the cause of the nuclear accident at Fukushima was the earthquake and not the tsunami, opposite of what has been reported to date:

Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011

SENTAKU MAGAZINEReal cause of nuclear crisis

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), the operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Station, has been insisting that the culprit that caused the nuclear crisis was the huge tsunami that hit the plant after the March 11 earthquake. But evidence is mounting that the meltdown at the nuclear power plant was actually caused by the earthquake itself.

According to a science journalist well versed in the matter, Tepco is afraid that if the earthquake were to be determined as the direct cause of the accident, the government would have to review its quake-resistance standards completely, which in turn would delay by years the resumption of the operation of existing nuclear power stations that are suspended currently due to regular inspections.

Without intending to be callous, I am still not seeing a death toll or full reporting of measurable human damage from the radiation release.

The stories say more than 10,000 dead (from tsunami) and radiation peaked at dangerous levels (worse than we were told then), but they don't finish that thought with a human toll specific to the nuclear accident.

My thought is that this horrible experience will lead to the capability of constructing nuclear plants with the ability to withstand future levels that are immeasurably unlikely to happen elsewhere, but that process seems badly delayed by a lack of good information coming out.

My thought is that this horrible experience will lead to the capability of constructing nuclear plants with the ability to withstand future levels that are immeasurably unlikely to happen elsewhere, but that process seems badly delayed by a lack of good information coming out.

I like Japan, but good/truthful information from the government is sorely and usually lacking. People sadly just accept it....

"A Harley-Davidson caught in last year's devastating tsunami in Japan has washed up in Canada after drifting across the Pacific.The motorbike, with Japanese plates from one of the hardest hit areas, was found on the west coast by a beachcomber in a cargo container on the Haida Gwaii islands, off the coast of British Columbia.

"You just never know what you're going to stumble upon when you go for a drive and, lo and behold, you just come across something that's out of this world," said Peter Mark, who was riding an all-terrain vehicle on the beach."

This week, Rachelle Saunders spends the hour discussing the disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor. She'll examine the impacts on the environment, public health and the reputation of nuclear power, with Dr. Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists, and former project director of the Independent Task Force on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Dr. Rob Tarzwell, specialist in nuclear medicine and psychiatry, and creator of the One Minute Medical School video series.